What is Local SEO?

Local SEO is the process of optimizing your website so that it appears in the first positions of Google, Bing and Yahoo for searches that are related to your area / city / country.

Let me give you a couple of examples to understand this better.

Example 1: lawyers in Nevada

When a user types the location in the search query, then the user-intent is clear and Google will try to satisfy the user by showing in the top results businesses (in this case law firms) that are registered to operate in the state of Nevada.

How does Google know where a company is operating? This is something we will see in a while…

Example 2: florists in London

When you search google.co.uk for the term florists in London you will get a list of flower shops that have a physical business in the general area of London.

Example 3: Italian restaurants in New York City

On your next trip to New York, open Google and type Italian restaurants in New York City.

I’m sure that the returned results will help you choose a nice restaurant to enjoy a memorable pasta or pizza.

Why? Because as we will see below, businesses (in this case Italian restaurants), have to prove that they deserve one of the top positions in the search results.

Google is very careful as to which websites to showcase in the local search results box, since the local companies that get a top listing will receive higher CTRs (click through rates) and traffic.

The list could go on and on but the general idea about local SEO is that:

The user wants to find a business (address or a telephone number), in the particular area defined by the query, so as to take a visit or call to satisfy a requirement.

Google on the other hand, wants to keep users happy by giving them details for companies that satisfy the user-intent.

Someone may say that local SEO is similar to long tail SEO but with the location added in the query string, and this is correct.

Actually, we can say that people looking for local businesses are the most targeted searches you can find online.

Who needs local SEO?

From the examples above, it is clear that every business that has an address and operates in a certain area needs local SEO.

Do you own a restaurant, a barber shop, a law firm? Are you a doctor, mechanic or a retailer?

You need to have a website that is optimized for local SEO.

People use the Internet to search for a business before they actually visit and if they don’t find yours, it’s obvious that you are losing customers and opportunities and someone else will take advantage of them.

What are the benefits of local SEO for small business?

Increase your chances of appearing higher in the SERPS – As you can see from the examples above, businesses that are chosen to appear in Google local results (including Google Maps) are more likely to receive more visits than websites that don’t appear in the recommendations.

More conversions – The conversion rate is higher, since visitors coming to the website from local search are highly targeted.

Brand visibility and awareness –People searching for businesses in your area will know about your existence and this will make your brand more recognizable and also raise awareness’s about your business.

Higher return on investment – An optimized website for local search can generate more value to a ‘brick and mortar’ business, since all they want is to get customers searching the web for businesses in their area.

This generates a higher return on the investment made and potentially faster growth than companies who don’t take advantage of this.

How is local SEO different than general SEO?

Local SEO optimization is for targeting searches in a specific geo location while SEO practices are applicable for global wide searches.

It should be noted though that all SEO advice about on-page or off-page SEO is also applicable for local SEO as well.

The big difference is that for local optimization, you also need to provide location awareness signals to Google, as we will see in the checklist below.

Mobile searches are by ‘default’ local

If you are searching from mobile or if you have allowed Google to track your location when searching from Desktop, you don’t have to type a location in your search string, because Google already knows your location.

In other words, if you are physically located in San Francisco and type in indian restaurants on Google search from your mobile, Google will return the same results as if you typed indian restaurants in san Francisco.

The same is true if you search for indian restaurants near me.

Should all businesses practice Local SEO?

No and the reason is that if you try to target users in a particular area, it will be more difficult to rank for keywords that are related to global search.

Take for example my business, reliablesoft.net.

We have clients from all over the World and since we want to rank for more general terms, we do not provide any local signals to search engines, other than those we need to give to our users for business clarity and trust.

Local SEO Checklist

We have talked about the importance and benefits of local SEO to businesses but we have not yet come to the most important part of this post i.e. what you have to do in order to optimize your website for local search.

The local SEO checklist below has all the information you need to get started.

1. Optimize your logo

One of the first things that search engines encounter when crawling your website is the logo and this is a good place to start your local SEO optimization.

There is a detail post about logo optimization by Chris Silver Smith on searchengineland but the most important points are outlined below:

Make sure that your image filename is descriptive. Instead of using logo.png better use a more meaningful filename like ‘Mayers-dental-surgeons-logo.png’

ALT text is important for all images but it’s more important for the logo.

You can use the ALT text to give more details about the image and in this case the location of your business.

For example, you can use ‘Mayers Dental Surgeons, Florida’ as the ALT text.

In all places that your logo is shown i.e. website, FB, Google Business page, Twitter, etc, try to use the same logo and ALT text.

2. Work on your titles, descriptions and URLS

Titles and Descriptions are very important for local SEO.

As explained in my seo tutorial, the title should help both users and search engines understand as many things possible about the website before visiting.

An optimized title should be between 50-60 characters and if you are targeting local customers then the location (and if possible your area phone number) should be part of your title and description.

A couple of real examples from the web:

As far as the URLS are concerned, you need to make sure that you have an SEO friendly URL structure that includes an indication of the location (where applicable).

For example, if you have a business selling ‘second hand cars in Wisconsin’ and you have a page for the ‘Saloon’ cars, then your local SEO optimized URL could be: https://www.example.com/saloon-cars-wisconsin

10. Register your website with Bing Places for Business

Bing Places for Business is free, easy to complete and another way to verify your business information online. Do not forget to link to your Bing profile from your Google My Business page (and vice versa).

11. Register Your Business With Local directories

Register your businesses with any trusted local directories and remember to be consistent in the address details you are using.

You don’t have to overdo it but only submit your businesses in quality local directories with value.

12. Create a Local business page on Facebook

Facebook has a special type of category for local businesses.

When you create a Facebook Business Page and choose the category ‘local business’, Facebook will verify your address and business details.

When this is done successfully, they will add a grey check mark next to your logo, indicating that your contact details are verified.

You can then add your business hours, map and other information about your business.

You can post high quality content on a regular basis and do location awareinternal linking.

For example, from a blog post you can link to your services pages using the anchor ‘financial services in Texas’.

This alone will not do much but it is another small step in your overall optimization process.

Also, you can use the blog to target ‘local keywords’ in the title and content of the blog posts

21. Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube and more

I haven’t mentioned twitter, pinterest, youTube or any other social networks separately, but for best results you also need to maintain an accurate profile on those as well.

These networks are great to get some people in your area to follow you since all social channels have the facility to suggest followers based on the location / address information of your business.

Can you target Local SEO with PPC?

One of the most popular questions I get when discussing with customers about their local SEO strategy is whether you can use targeted PPC campaigns and get those local customers, instead of trying to get them organically by going through the local optimization process.

The answer is simple and straightforward, yes you can use PPC to get local customers but PPC does not make SEO obsolete or vice versa.

Read my article on the difference between SEO and PPC for more information but the bottom line is that both techniques should be used together and in parallel for maximum results.

Conclusion

Local SEO is a valuable tool for every business that has a physical address and wants to use the Internet to get more customers from people searching for businesses/services/goods in their area.

The techniques to use for local SEO are over and above traditional SEO techniques meaning that you should first do your SEO as you would without caring about local and then optimize for local SEO using the methods outlined above.

In a nutshell, the most important aspects of local SEO are:

Display the full contact information on your website.

Optimize your URLS, titles and descriptions for Local SEO.

Add schema for local businesses on your homepage.

Use the same address (NAP) consistently throughout all places, networks

Create and verify your business pages with Google My Business and Facebook Local Business.

Try to get people to review your business on trusted services and make sure that you reply back.

Local SEO Checklist

Here is your Local SEO Checklist:

Optimize your logo

Work on your titles, descriptions and URLS

NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) on the home page

NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) for the rest of the pages

Make sure that NAP information is consistent across all channels

Add a Google map in the contact information page

Register your company with Google My Business

Register with Yahoo! Aabaco Small Business

Use Schema (structured data markup) to give more information about your local business to Google